Shadeborn: A Book of Underrealm (2 page)

Chet looked worried. “Are you sure rest is not needed? Did the night’s sleep find you at all?”

“Who needs sleep when the world is waking? Come.”
 

Loren seized Chet’s arm and nearly dragged him from the table, taking each step carefully to make sure she did not stumble. As they walked off together, Loren was sure she saw Albern hiding a smile.

two

The crisp morning air did much to clear Loren’s head, and she drank it in with long appreciative breaths. It felt better to be walking with Chet than sitting alone at her table nursing wine, but sometimes the drink was easier.
 

Dawn’s thin grey light was creeping into the sky from the east, and Northwood was stirring into the morrow. She heard the sharp hiss of a smith’s forge firing up and the first tentative cocks crowing to greet the day. New faces upon the streets made Loren feel grateful, for there were fewer curious eyes upon them. She no longer held much fear that her many enemies had followed them, and yet the more meager the number of their observers in Northwood, the better.

A single guard sat at a table by the open gate. She was well accustomed to seeing Chet and Loren take their walks, and gave them little more than a cursory glance and a quick nod before returning to her game of moons. A few moments later, they found themselves among the forest trees they had once called home. A few steps farther still, and Northwood had vanished behind them, blocked from view by an army of trunks.

Now Loren felt herself truly relax, like the last cobwebs had been swept from the edges of her mind. Here within the wood, her eyes saw things differently. Bent blades of grass spoke of passing deer, and when she heard a skittering within a bush, Loren knew it at once for the rustling of a vole. The forest was altogether different from the world of men, a place she had greatly missed in the months since leaving, and all the more enjoyable because she knew Chet saw it the same.

Sometimes, they spoke as they walked. Others, as now, they strolled in silence, allowing their wandering feet to carry them where they may. They found a narrow brook, eagerly running to join the Melnar, and turned in silence to find a spot upstream to cross.
 

Soon they found it: a place where the banks rose high above the water’s surface, drawing together, close enough for a long jump to send them across. The sun peeked above the branches of eastern trees as they reached the other side, and the Birchwood’s birds burst into song together.
 

They walked until they found themselves in a clearing some thirty paces across, with a great stone in the middle, sitting like a tombstone. There they sat together, backs to the boulder, its cool surface chilling them after their walk.
 

Loren loved their forest strolls in part because Chet seemed as content to silence or speech as she wished. He would eagerly converse with her or answer questions about what had happened in their village since her flight. From him, she had learned of her mother, who had vanished without a trace the day after her father’s funeral. Loren had some half-remembered notion of family in one of the northern outland kingdoms and assumed her mother had gone to find them. Good riddance, to Loren’s mind. She had also learned that after Chet’s mother passed, his father had courted Miss Aisley.
A fine pairing
, Loren thought. Chet himself was unsure what to think.

But when Loren wished for silence, Chet left her in an elegant quiet. He simply stared into the trees beside her, hands toying with a stick he had snatched from the ground. Together, they found comfort without words. Lacking pressure to speak, Loren found her tongue moved freely.

“In the city of Wellmont, I was caught trying to steal a man’s purse.”
 

Chet glanced at her, smirking. “I thought you were a great thief. Is that a lie, for you to be so easily caught?”

“I was not
easily
caught,” she said with a gentle shove. “I was betrayed by my own kindness. I saw the man beating his child and thought to relieve him of his coin—but then at the last moment, I thought the child might relish a life free from his father. That was a mistake. The moment I offered, he told his father, who called the constables.”

“A foolish boy. He could have gone with you, running headlong into mortal danger. At least you would not have beat him.”

“Mayhap.” Loren had not meant to turn the conversation toward a father and his child, for that subject took her toward things she would rather not consider. “But in any case, the constables brought us to their quarters within the city. And there, to his surprise as well as mine, I found Jordel waiting. I will remember his surprise—and anger—forever.”

Chet grew quiet, as he always did when Loren’s words turned to Jordel. He had never met the Mystic—something she desperately regretted. Everyone should have known the man, for his greatness, for his quiet and heartfelt praise, for his cold and terrible wrath. Loren doubted she would ever meet his like again.

“What surprised me then, though it should not have, was how quickly he guessed at what was happening. Once he heard that I had been caught stealing from the woodsman, his eyes grew sharp with suspicion. With barely a glance, he seemed to know the entire tale of man and boy and dealt with the father as cruelly as with his son. And though his anger with me lingered, it also softened and turned to something more like annoyance, as though he thought I was right to do as I had, though his duty forbade him to say so.”

Loren’s voice edged a tremble, so she stopped and bowed her head. A single tear leaked from her eye.
 

Once more, the clearing was silent save for morning birdsong.

Into the stillness, Loren spoke, and again her voice was steady. “Where did they find my father?”

Chet glanced at Loren from the corner of his eye for a moment before looking away. “’Tis no tale for a day so beautiful.”

“I should guess it is too ugly for any day outside a storm. Tell me then, and let its darkness fade forever into our past.”
 

“You have seen too much darkness. I would not invite more upon you, not at least until you are ready. I wish to tell this tale but once, and in full, so that we need never speak it again.”

“Then tell it now,” said Loren.

Chet sighed, pushed himself from the rock, and sidled over to sit in front of Loren, his eyes fixed on hers, until she turned her gaze away.

“His corpse was a league south of the village when we found it. He lay facedown, head turned to the side, eyes open and staring. There was no blood in his spittle, but it had greatly frothed and gathered around his lips.”

Loren swallowed, knowing what would come next: the tale of his wound, the one that had slain him, there in the same forest where they now sat. Chet watched, gauging her reaction while she kept her face still.

“He had bled to death; we could see it at once. Though the fletching had broken from the arrow, the shaft still stuck from his thigh. It had hit a vein or nicked it as he crawled, and the lifeblood had drained from his body. Its trail stretched far south, mayhap half a league. We followed it and found the signs of a struggle. Between him and, I guessed, you, but also a third person we did not know. I thought it might have been the wizard sought by the constables.”

“You were right in that,” said Loren, glad her voice left steady and not in a croak. “That was Xain. My father nearly strangled the life from him.”

“He would have had you not stopped him,” said Chet quietly. “And he might have killed you, too.”

Loren remembered the fight as though it were happening again, the spite that filled her father’s eyes, the spittle that left his lips with every hateful word. Now she imagined him crawling north after the fight, the shaft protruding from his flesh, life soaking the dirt beneath him. She saw him shuddering and convulsing as he finally died, and wondered if he had spent his final words cursing her; his flesh and blood, whom he had never given anything so wasteful as love.

“Likely my words cannot help you. But you should not blame yourself, Loren. You restrained your hand beyond all reason. You might have planted your arrow in his eye, or his heart. You did not. You tried to show mercy. And mayhap, if he had stayed where he was, he would not have died in the end.”

But Loren knew better, remembering when she would chop her father’s logs how he would employ threats to make her work faster. And she remembered how, if he thought she were being lazy or disobedient, he would take her into the woods and beat her, his thick and meaty fists leaving bruises beneath her clothing that would linger for weeks. And she remembered going back to chopping his logs, gripping the axe tightly in her hands and picturing it lodged in his skull, or in his back, between the ribs to still his heart forever.

Loren’s breath rose ever faster with her racing thoughts. One after another flashed through her mind: the corpse, the arrow, the axe and the corpse, the spittle and the blood. Again, the corpse.
 

Then the corpse became Jordel’s, and she saw the Mystic’s twisted body sprawled upon the valley floor.

Loren fought her vomit and fell doubled up on hands and knees.

“Loren!” Chet kneeled beside her side and placed a hand on her shoulder. She pushed him off, breathing faster until stars danced before her eyes and her head was spinning. She lifted her gaze to stare upon the sky but could see only black where there should have been blue.
 

Black and blue, like my bruises.

She screamed and slammed a fist into the earth. She struck again, and again. Her fist flew sideways, into the boulder. Her knuckles split and spilled an ugly gush of blood.

Pain gave her focus, and Loren clutched her hand close. At last she could sit back without her gorge rising. Rage turned to hot, bitter tears, leaving trails of grief upon her cheeks. Chet sat with an arm around her shoulder, the other cradling her mangled hand.

“It was not your fault,” he kept murmuring. “It was not your fault.”

Soon, she felt herself regain some control. As she had so often, Loren took her rage and grief and hid them deep, inside her soul where no one could see. At last she looked up at Chet with a wan smile.
 

“I am all right,” she said softly. “Come. The children will have risen, and are likely driving the others mad.”

Still trembling, Loren stood with his helping hand. Together, they slowly set off into the trees. Loren no longer saw the green leaves nor the clear water of the bubbling brook as they crossed it. She saw only black and blue, and the red of blood.

three

Gem had been a street urchin when Loren found him on the streets of Cabrus, hungry and picking pockets in the service of a guild of young thieves. Annis had been a daughter of wealth and plenty, her every whim tended to by the comforts of her mother’s coin. She had grown much in body and mind since Loren met her, but still she carried a haughty air and often expected others to service her needs.

Their circumstances could scarcely have been more different, yet the children had surprised Loren since their arrival in Northwood, for they had both spent every spare moment working for Mag around the inn. From tending to the stables to running drinks and meals to visitors when the common room grew lively, they eagerly took to even the most menial task. Neither had been raised into a life of honest work, and yet they assumed their roles seriously and only rarely pried themselves away from the inn to explore the city. They had greatly enjoyed their time in Northwood, and Loren, when she thought of it, told herself that she had lingered in part to give them the rest they greatly deserved. Yet even to her own ears, the excuse sounded flimsy.

“With the cook’s compliments.” Gem arrived at the table with a tray—five bowls of stew balanced atop it.

“And the lady’s.” Annis swooped in with another tray holding five mugs of ale and two loaves of bread.

“Our blessings upon the cook and the lady.” Albern scooped up his bowl and mug before tearing the heel from a loaf and dipping into the stew.

Sun brushed the horizon outside, and many within the town had joined the inn’s tenants for supper and a drink. The common room buzzed with talk and occasional bursts of laughter. Loren could hear the plucking of strings from somewhere in back, the familiar sound of some minstrel aiming to earn enough coin for dinner. But still her mind lingered on terrible thoughts, and though her stomach growled at the smell of stew, it tasted bland as paper upon her tongue. Chet tried valiantly not to show his concern, but Loren could almost feel it flowing like the glow of a torch.

“None of you will be surprised, I am sure, to learn that I have spent another day proving my worth.” Gem spoke brightly as he ate. The food mashed loudly between his teeth as he talked around it. “Today, I cleaned the hooves of every horse in the stable and laid fresh hay for each steed. I found dishes stacked into a mighty mountain, so I cleaned them all, without request. I hardly know how this place managed before me.”
 

“Oh, they must have pined for a dishwasher like yourself, master urchin,” said Albern with smirk. “Poor Mag must have spent her nights weeping herself to sleep for want of such noble, scrubbing hands.”

“Just so,” said Gem, missing the jest in the bowyer’s tone.

Annis sniffed primly and dipped the corner of her loaf into the stew, nibbling with well-practiced manners. “Well, while you have been getting yourself filthy down here, I have been striving for cleanliness. I cannot guess when the upstairs rooms were last cleaned, and some stank of something that I am sure I would not like to know about. But they are clean now, and I have sore knees and hands worn nearly to the bone. Give me a few more days here, and I am sure to make the place fit for the High King herself, though why she should find herself in such a town as this I am sure I know not.”